The Dr. Hyman Show - What Is Your Mouth Telling You About Your Overall Health?

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

What Is Your Mouth Telling You About Your Overall Health? | This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens Traditional medicine approaches the body by isolating single organs and dividing them up into medical specialties. Yet, by seeking to identify the root cause of symptoms and correcting imbalances, long-lasting healing can be attained. It comes as no surprise then that oral health is connected to full-body health in myriad ways. From infectious and chronic diseases, chronic low energy, inflammation, and even protection from Alzheimer’s—it appears everything is tied to the health of your mouth, gums, teeth, and saliva. In this mini-episode, Dr. Hyman speaks with Dr. Cynthia Li about how a trip to the dentist’s office led to valuable insight in her journey through autoimmune disease. He also speaks with Dr. Todd LePine about the important link between oral health and systemic health. Dr. Cynthia Li received her medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. She’s practiced as an internist in many settings, including Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, San Francisco General Hospital, and St. Anthony Medical Clinic serving the homeless. She currently has a private practice in Berkeley, CA and is the author of, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness. Dr. Todd LePine graduated from Dartmouth Medical School and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, specializing in Integrative Functional Medicine. He is an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner. Prior to joining The UltraWellness Center, he worked as a physician at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, MA, for 10 years. Dr. LePine’s focus at The UltraWellness Center is to help his patients achieve optimal health and vitality by restoring the natural balance to both the mind and the body. His areas of interest include optimal aging, bio-detoxification, functional gastrointestinal health, systemic inflammation, autoimmune disorders and the neurobiology of mood and cognitive disorders. Dr. LePine teaches around the world, and has given lectures to doctors and patients at American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM), Age Management Medicine Group (AMMG), the University of Miami Integrative Medicine Conference, The Kripalu Center in Lenox, MA, and is on the faculty for American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M). Dr. LePine is the head of the Scientific Advisory Board for Designs for Health and a consultant for Diagnostic Solutions Laboratory. He enjoys skiing, kayaking, hiking, camping and golfing in the beautiful Berkshires, and is a fitness enthusiast. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is offering Doctor’s Farmacy listeners a full year supply of their Vitamin D3/K2 Liquid Formula free with your first purchase, plus 5 free travel packs. Just go to athleticgreens.com/hyman to take advantage of this great offer. Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Dr. Cynthia Li, “How a Doctor Cured Her Autoimmune Disease with Functional Medicine” here: https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/CynthiaLi   Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Dr. Todd LePine, “The Functional Medicine Approach To Oral Health” here: https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/92CPnu7E

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Going deeper and then in my research I came across gluten and gluten causing enamel defects, gluten you know causing inflammation in the gut which therefore could translate into poor oral hygiene and or just conditioning of the gums and the teeth and so that was just kind of another step in that process. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. My main goal with diet is to use food as medicine. But even when we eat super well, most of us are missing out on certain essential nutrients. Our soils have become depleted and our digestive tracts just aren't working so great.

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You'll get it delivered straight to your door and I promise you'll feel the difference Athletic Greens can make in your daily wellness routine. Again, that's athleticgreens.com forward slash Hyman. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, I'm Kea Perowit, one of the producers of The Doctor's Pharmacy podcast.

Many individuals who've experienced their own health crisis can relate to having a number of seemingly vague and unrelated symptoms. Yet approaching the body as one unique integrated system is often a pivotal step in the path to healing. In Dr. Hyman's conversation with Dr. Cynthia Lee, she shared her personal journey through autoimmunity and the unexpected insight she gained from a visit to the dentist's office. I began to shift my thinking in relationship to health and disease in a much more living sort of embodied way.

So when my thyroid was out of whack, it wasn't just my thyroid. It was my whole hormone system, which is tied then to the digestive system, which is tied to the immune system. Like it suddenly started making sense. To the thigh bone, right? Yeah, exactly. And the body is connected to the brain. Which is actually amazing in medicine that our entire training teaches us the opposite, that there's

all these organ systems, right? We take the GI system and the liver and the lungs and the brain and the heart and the hormone. And you go to specialists for every different part of you, and nobody connects the dots. Right, and then the gluten issue came up. I was really skeptical of it. It's one of the biggest drivers of thyroid disease, Hashimoto's. Yes, yes, and the celiac experts know that,

but the endocrinologists don't. Right. So there's no crosstalk there either. And this is in conventional medicine right um so and i do remember asking my endocrinologist like what can i do what can i do and he said nothing you know it's genetic oh gosh no it's not right right it's a genetic predisposition but not predetermination and um so the but the gluten thing didn't actually arise. I think I was partly in denial about it. You know, there were lots of rabbit holes that I knew about and I just didn't want to go down.

As long as I was steadily getting better. It was my older daughter who, she was five at the time. I was taking her to her first dentist visit. And, you know, I felt like as a family we ate pretty well. She didn't do a lot of sweets. But she had not just one cavity at her visit. She had six cavities. Wow.

Yeah. And I was floored. And the dentist kept saying, well, don't feel guilty. Don't feel guilty. And I was like, wait a minute. I wasn't feeling guilty until you just said that. But it made me investigate like something else is going on. Like I know how we eat.

I know how she brushes. And I know cavities happen. But like six? It just didn't compute. So I started researching. And that's when I came across Weston A. Price's work around the condition of teeth tied directly to diet, but then going deeper. And then in my research, I came across gluten and gluten causing enamel defects, gluten, you know, causing inflammation in the gut, which therefore could translate into poor oral hygiene and, or just

conditioning of the gums and the teeth and um so that was just kind of another step in that process when i realized oh i got to go back and again this is not unconventional this is just traditional socrates said all diseases begin in the gut right so we're just kind of going back and i removed gluten and I had massive withdrawal. Diarrhea, irritable bowel. And again, this was kind of before the time that I realized I understood about detox and how healing happens. Is that often it gets a lot worse before it gets better. And that it could be a good sign. So I was really frightened by how severe my reaction was when I stopped gluten.

So I was thinking it was a bad thing. But then, you know what, I stuck with it. And a week later, it calmed down. And then my health improved a notch. And not only that, but we changed the way that our whole family ate. And my younger daughter, so my older daughter's teeth like, you know, really basically resolved. I mean, they became really strong. Some of her cavities even filled, like they recalcified and didn't have to get filled. Dr. Hyman also spoke with Dr. Todd

Lepine about the crucial role that oral health plays in total body wellness. So, you know, most people who go to medical school, we don't really learn much about the mouth. We don't know you've got gum disease or you can have sores in your mouth. I mean, a few things here and there, but it's just amazing how much of a vacuum in our education oral health is. But as it turns out, it's been linked to everything from Alzheimer's to heart disease to cancer and to autoimmune diseases and on and on and on.

And the question is, what is going on with the connection between our oral health and our overall health? We know that in functional medicine, the gut is sort of where everything starts and it can either lead you down the path of health or it can lead you down the path of disease. And the beginning of the gut is sort of where everything starts and it can either lead you down the path of health or it can lead you down the path of disease. And the beginning of the gut is the mouth. So as you mentioned, you know, in medical school, we didn't learn anything about the mouth. That was like for the dentist, you know, we'll just ignore that. And the dentist just basically stay in the mouth and they don't really realize that there's a whole body connected to the mouth

or some of the dentists don't. And this is where I think a lot of both, you know, even functional medicine physicians and dentists really miss the connections. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think both of us have seen patients who, when addressing their dental issues, often resolve other systemic issues. So maybe you can share a little bit about some of the patients you might have seen that have links to their systemic health from their oral health. Oh, absolutely. I have three cases. Real briefly, the first case is a patient who actually was a friend of mine. And I remember we were talking over a beer and he was telling me some of his health issues. And, you know, he was bemoaning the fact that he was having all these symptoms

and nobody could figure it out. And I said, well, why don't you come see me? I'll, you know, I'll do a consult on you. We'll take a look at it. That's what sort of what I do. And he told me, you know, in going over his history, that he had a Cadillac in his mouth. And I said, what do you mean you have a Cadillac in your mouth?

I got about $40,000 worth of dental work in my mouth. And he goes, you know, the dentist said, I have weak enamel. And I said, well, what do you mean weak enamel? And I said, you know, weak enamel is not normal. And I said, did he tell you why you have weak enamel? And the first thing that popped into my head is that he probably had undiagnosed celiac disease, which he caught an enamel. And lo and behold, I tested him. And sure enough, he had marked a response to gluten. And when he got off of it, I mean, all of a lot of his symptoms, they didn't affect his teeth because, you know, the horse was already out of the barn.

But he also was having sort of unexplained fatigue and malaise and all that kind of stuff. And actually just getting off of gluten cleared up those other conditions. And we all, you and I well know that there are multiple autoimmune conditions that are associated with gluten sensitivity, but weak enamel is one of those things. And I also, I try to get my patients and the dentists who I see, either as patients or dentistsid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and even dementia that are directly connected to poor oral health. It's incredible. Yeah. I mean, dementia. And they're finding that the microbes in the mouth get absorbed and then go up into the brain and create inflammation in the brain. And there's a lot of organisms that are in the mouth. In fact, the oral organisms, and we have hundreds of oral organisms, there's about a 45% concordance between the bacteria that

we find in the mouth and the bacteria that we find in the digestive tract. And you can think of the whole body as being like a tube. And the opening of the tube starts at the mouth. And then it goes all the way down into the stomach, the small intestine, large intestine, and out the anus. And those bacteria that are in the mouth get swallowed by the body. I mean, you will swallow about 10 billion bacteria per day. And some of those bacteria, when you swallow them, can actually cause systemic inflammation. And those systemic inflammation can manifest in the joints, in the heart, or in the brain. It can also promote systemic inflammatory diabesity, as you well know. So it's a real, you know, important issue. Everybody's immune system is unique.

And when certain people are exposed to certain organisms at critical levels, it provokes a low-grade inflammatory response, or in some cases, actually even more acute. And that can lead to a whole host of systemic issues. So the diet that you eat will feed both the bacteria in the mouth and then also the bacteria in the gut. So some simple things that you can do is avoid snacking, drink water after you've had a meal, watch for processed carbs, sort of fake food, if you will, in your diet. Chewing xylitol gum is actually something that is a simple thing to do, uh, that can actually have, uh, uh, uh, anti dental carries, uh, type of an effect. Um, and then, uh, using electric toothbrush.

Uh, that's another thing that is a simple thing to do. I pretty much recommend that for all my patients. Uh, and you can, you know, use that right after, uh, right after you eat. And then also, um, having lots of fiber in your diet. When you're eating fiber, it basically is cleaning the teeth. That's great. And you know, it's often there's a lot of things we can do to improve our oral health through supplementation. Things like CoQ10 is very important. Proanthocyanidins from colorful plant foods, vitamin C for gum disease, even things like vitamin D to help the bone structure

and prevent osteoporosis in the jaw, which can cause weak teeth and so forth. So there's a lot of things you can do to actually help improve your overall oral health. So from a functional medicine perspective, we really deal very differently through diets, through nutritional supplementation, through various herbal therapies and other things that can actually help us. And we also focus on the big issues that are somewhat controversial, which is heavy metals in the mouth and mercury and even root canals can be a problem. I don't think all root canals are a problem for everybody, but they can become infected and it's often missed. So this is really a new frontier of oral health and systemic health.

And I think we really don't pay enough attention to it in medicine. The mouth is a part of the body that is too often overlooked when it comes to health and systemic health. And I think we really don't pay enough attention to it in medicine. The mouth is a part of the body that is too often overlooked when it comes to health and wellness. And it can act as a gateway to a multitude of health problems. From infectious and chronic diseases to chronic low energy inflammation and even protection from Alzheimer's, everything is tied to the health of your mouth, gums, teeth, and saliva. By educating ourselves about this, we can make better choices that will impact our health right now and for years to come. If you'd like to learn more about any of the topics you heard in today's episode, I encourage you to check out Dr. Hyman's full-length conversations with Dr. Cynthia

Lee and Dr. Todd Lepine. If you have any people in your life who could benefit from this information, please consider sharing this episode with your community. We need each other to create a healthier us. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only.

This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. Thank you. ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.